


The Thought that Counts

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-31
Updated: 2008-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-03 20:41:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which John makes Rodney a Christmas present.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thought that Counts

**Author's Note:**

> For Cate at Christmas.

The twenty-fifth of December, back at the SGC, dawned at roughly the same time that Athos' sun was setting on the ninth day of the Second Cycle of Greethna, and the ruins of Sateda's capital city were fading into dusk on the second day of the year 7694. On Atlantis, no one had yet decided which calendar they were going to properly follow—whether to go with an adapted version of the Gregorian or another Earth calendar, to sync themselves with Satedan Standard Time or a variant of the Ancients' old calendar, or even to come up with something new entirely—but however it was calculated, on this year, Christmas fell just as the Lantean days were beginning to acquire the long heat of summer.

Teyla had no childhood memories of the festival, or appreciable emotional attachment to its celebration; but she remembered enough Harvest Moons on Athos, enough long winter's evenings spent singing the Ancestors' Cycle with her people, to understand the importance a celebration of light amidst the cold could have, and had spent enough time amongst a sometimes-strange people to know the disorientation that could accompany a syncopation in life's rhythm. When Sam, then, sat down beside her and passed her a cup of the odd drink the Lanteans called eggnog, and half-complained about how unseasonable it was to have an evergreen tree for decoration when it was 75 degrees outside, Teyla did nothing more than pat her reassuringly on the hand and smile, though she herself could see nothing strange in a _beeska_ tree still growing strongly at the beginning of Second Greethna.

The tree stood tall—three stories high in one of the great open spaces that the Lanteans had incorporated into Atlantis, a stained-glass honeycomb of a room with light that made the glossy green needles of the _beeska_ seem to glow. Getting it into the room had involved efforts of a rather heroic nature on behalf of John, a team of combat engineers, and Puddlejumper 3. It took many hours, but John seemed to find the effort worth it—he was sitting close by her now on a large seating cushion he was sharing with Rodney, legs crossed loosely in front of him, neck craned back so that he could look up and up at the tree, at its garlands of tiny lights and the naquadah-powered star that glowed at its top.

The smile on his face was unusually relaxed, a small curve of open contentment, and it stayed there while John worked his way through two bottles of beer, and all the space around them filled up with the dozens of their patchwork family—those Athosians who had come, glad of the invitation to any festival of merriment; those who had stood with Teyla from the beginning; those who had chosen to come live amongst them, though they knew the probabilities of cost, of fate. Indeed, it grew wider when Sam suggested that their little group exchange their gifts towards the end of the evening; while Jennifer and Radek exchanged what they termed 'gag gifts', while Ronon pulled on the extra-large cap with ear flaps which Jeannie had knitted for him, while Teyla regarded with genuine pleasure the iPod which Rodney had equipped with microphone and speakers so that she could record and play back the songs and the voices of her people, it was as close to a beam as John could ever reach.

Or so she thought—for last of all was the bulky, imperfectly-wrapped package which John pulled from beneath the _beeska_'s spreading boughs and presented to Rodney. Rodney regarded it a little dubiously at first, but was soon ripping into the many layers of brightly coloured paper with all the enthusiasm he always seemed to possess for the unknown prize. The wrappings soon disappeared to reveal dark wood, carved and curved and polished to a deep sheen.

"You got me a _toboggan_?" Rodney said in tones of deep uncertainty.

"Made it myself," John said, voice proud, and suddenly the long evenings which John had spent 'filling out paperwork' rather than practicing the bantos rods with her made much more sense to Teyla.

"Tobogganing?"

"Yup."

"In the _snow_? At dangerous speeds? With _my_ back?"

"Isn't it awesome?"

"Looks pretty cool to me," Ronon said, his voice muffled while he pulled on a sweater which Jennifer had purchased for him, indistinct through its thin black folds.

"It's way cool, buddy," John nodded at him, full of bonhomie and alcoholic cheer.

Rodney sighed and poked at the toboggan with a suspicious finger. Teyla could imagine what he was thinking—that something made by John's own hands could not possibly be safe—but it was solid and unmoving beneath his hands. "You basically got me what _you_ wanted for Christmas, didn't you?"

"Well. Yeah," John admitted. "But think of it this way—I get the toboggan, you get to enjoy the après ski."

"Après toboggan," Rodney said irritably, before huffing out a sigh and setting the toboggan down on the floor in front of him and John. "Though I suppose there is a certain, hmm, attraction in the thoughts of finding a quiet planet where we can, uh, work up an appetite. As it were."

John leered at him, and Teyla tried very hard to repress the giggle that wanted to escape her close-pressed lips at how that made Sam roll her eyes indulgently and knock back the last of her eggnog. John and Sam acted very much like siblings at times, Teyla thought—just as she and her brother had once been—and John elbowed Sam lightly in the side before turning to Rodney and saying, "Well, what did you get _me_?"

Rodney smiled smugly and set his beer bottle down beside him before rummaging in the swiftly-diminishing pile of presents. It took him a moment or two to produce a soft package wrapped in tissue paper which he tossed into John's lap. John ripped it open to reveal twelve pairs of sturdy woollen socks which, it seemed, Rodney had commissioned from Ronon. (In return, Teyla would later learn, for two dozen of Jeannie's sugar cookies and a USB stick full of those zombie movies for which Ronon had an unwavering and uncomplicated love.) They had reinforced heels, and brightly coloured toes; made from thick Allonkin wool, and produced by Ronon on a pair of wickedly sharp circular needles, they were so good at keeping out the salt-water damp that they were one of the most widely-traded products in the Lantean barter economy.

"Hey, these are great, buddy", John said, sticking one of the socks onto his left hand and wiggling it. "No more cold toes!" It was quite a considerate gift, Teyla thought: there were few things worse on a mission than having to combat damp toes as well as hungry Wraith.

"You got your boyfriend socks?" Sam blurted out, before pinking a little; the alcohol content in the eggnog must have been stronger than she thought, or perhaps she simply had not seen Miko 'spiking it', as the Earth expression went, earlier on.

Jennifer peered out from behind Ronon's shoulder. "Your first Christmas together and you didn't get him something more, you know… meaningful? Something that says hey, I get you as a person?"

Rodney smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand and said, "God, you're right! I almost forgot the other part!"

Sam and Teyla and Jennifer shared a complacent smile—the smile which Teyla had learned quickly following her arrival on Atlantis; it had overtones of _men_ for those women for Earth, with a special twitch at the corner of the mouth which seemed reserved solely for John and Rodney. Teyla's smile changed swiftly to laughter, though, when she saw what Rodney pulled from beneath the tree: unadorned except for a large bow stuck to it with electrical tape.

"You got him a forty-eight pack of chewing gum?" Radek said, eyebrows shooting up to vanish beneath the untamed mess of his fringe. Sam and Jennifer both groaned.

"_Spearmint_," John breathed happily, and clutched the package in both hands.

"See?" Rodney said to the group at large, eggnoggy smugness radiating from his every pore. "That's forty-eight packs of meaningful, right there."


End file.
